Are you a novice in the business of web design? If yes, read on.

It’s no secret that today a web designer needs to have more than just good skills and sound technical knowledge to craft successful websites.  Web designing has experienced dramatic growth from the time it first emerged on the scene, which means web design firms and freelancers have their hands full, constantly trying to compete with each other to grab customer attention through the quality of their site designs.

If you want to win in the extremely competitive world of web design, there are lots of things you need to learn before you actually start designing!

Displaying lack of knowledge is not an option for web designers.

Many novice designers are so consumed by the latest web design trends like flat design, responsive web design, parallax web design, long scrolling home pages and many more that they usually forget about some essential web design elements.

This is a cardinal sin because the integration of the latest cutting edge designing concepts can work only if you have implemented these fundamental web design elements to perfection.

So, what are the design elements that newbie designers cannot afford to overlook?

Take a look:

1. Good Visual Design

Today, 89% of customers search the Web before making a purchase decision. In most of these cases, customers first check out a business’s website to know more about the company and its products (or services).  Plenty of research shows that a website only has a few seconds to grab and hold visitors’ attention. Hence, it’s really important for a web designer to design the site in a way such that it has compelling design.  This will not only form a good first impression but also entice visitors to keep coming back to the website.

Design includes all the visual elements of a website – the fonts, the colors, the white space, the template and the layout. A web designer should use a theme related to the business and should remain consistent with that theme for all the web pages of the site.

2. Simple Navigation

Apart from having an aesthetically appealing design, creating good website navigation is another important element that needs to be considered by web designers. Poor or confusing navigation stops people from finding all the great content on site. In fact it is one of the primary reasons why a website loses customers. On the other hand, good navigation is easy to use and provides excellent user experience. So, it’s vital for designers to craft navigation in a way such that it is well-constructed, easy- to-use, uncluttered and intuitive for the users.

Web designers should use breadcrumb navigation that allows users to see where the current page is located, in relation to the website’s hierarchy. Ensure the logo of the company links to its home page. It is also important to keep navigational menus to a minimum to avoid overwhelming users.

3. Search Engine Friendly

Web designers should design a website keeping in mind the search engine optimization (SEO) factor. The website’s design should also deliver a super smooth crawling experience to ensure all its pages can be easily indexed by search engine spiders. Ranking high on Google, Yahoo and Bing will generate more leads and customers.

Including keywords can raise a website’s ranking on SERPs. For instance, if you are a web development agency in Raleigh including keywords like ‘Raleigh’, ‘Web development agency’, ‘web development services’, ‘Raleigh web development’ and ‘web development business’ in your title, meta-tags or body of the post will help search engines categorize your content more accurately and show your website on SERPs to users who have entered search query ‘Raleigh web development agency’.

A web designer can also ensure a site ranks high on search engines by designing a site that loads faster and delivers a fantastic user experience that keeps users on the site for long periods of time.

4. Credible

When a person lands on a website for the first time, they form an opinion of the company in a fraction of a second. So, it can be clearly said that the design of a website plays an important role in building a business’s credibility. A business website that comes off as unprofessional or unreliable is unlikely to see a large number of visitors.

Web designers should build sites incorporating items that help identify a business as a legitimate resource and which inspires trust in visitors. Providing social proof on a website is the best way to build trust. This can basically be done by adding testimonials and full contact information which includes physical address, email address, contact number and a toll free number. Embedding live tweets on a site is another way of showing new visitors that a business is trustworthy.

5. Cross Browser Compatibility

There are multitudes of browsers being used today to surf the Internet. These include Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari and a few others. Despite the existence of Web standards, all these browsers work differently from each other. Cross browser compatibility is therefore vital to ensure that the site gives a consistent look irrespective of the kind of browser being used.

If the web designer overlooks this feature, it is highly likely that visitors of the site can’t access some features of the site on a particular browser. This may frustrate them and lead them to leave the site abruptly.

6. Mobile Compatibility

Today, apart from Web browser compatibility, a web designer should ensure that a website is compatible with mobile devices also. A large percentage of users have now started using smartphones and tablets to access Internet on the go.

Mobile traffic currently makes up more than 17% of the global Internet traffic and this number is continually increasing as smartphones and tablets grow in popularity. It’s quite evident from this figure that a website that is not responsive across multiple devices will miss out on a growing population of users.

Web designers can either build a separate mobile site or make the normal website responsive to ensure mobile customers are not lost. This can be decided based on the client’s requirement. Both options have their own pros and cons.

7. Calls to Action

The main goal of incorporating call-to-action buttons on a website is to provoke visitors to take some action.  That action could be anything like – watching a video, subscribing to a newsletter, signing on for a seminar, trying a free service or buying the product.

It’s important for a website’s success that call-to-action buttons are effective.  Web designers should thus design compelling calls to action.

Text, color and position of buttons – all play an important role. To ensure visitors take some action, call-to-action buttons need to be obvious and strong. Make these buttons clear, consistent and highly visible.

While there are lots of elements whose use guarantees effective website design, including the above mentioned 7 elements can make a real difference to the quality of your design. These often overlooked elements by newbie designers can make or break their site design!